


Re:Build

by tatersalad5001



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon - Kingdom Hearts Coded, Characters to be added, Fix-It, Game: Kingdom Hearts Coded, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Kingdom Hearts Coded, Tying Up Some Loose Ends, basically a big fun post re:coded adventure it's gonna be a lot of fun, never thought i'd see the day the purple cat was relevant enough to be tagged but here we are, no ships are explicitly canon here but read it however you want, you can see whatever ships you wanna see here. i'm doing the same, you know what? this /is/ a fix it now. my city now my rules
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9193643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatersalad5001/pseuds/tatersalad5001
Summary: The bugs have been eliminated from the journal, and the mystery of the message has been solved. The journal has been reset, and everything's back to normal. But...is it? People are still missing, the Heartless have grown even stronger, and everyone finds themselves fixing things up once again. Post-Re:Coded





	1. Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> So! This is a long project in the making. I started planning this my first semester of college, as a new, anxious freshman, and now that I'm entering my junior year, it's about time I exit the planning phase and start writing! A lot of my hesitance to start before now came from thinking that I might not be able to pull this off, and maybe I still can't, but I'm gonna give it my best shot! I really just want to get this out there. I'm going to enjoy it a lot.
> 
> Basically, there's quite a few loose ends left at the end of Re:Coded; at least in my opinion, you can agree or disagree if you like. And as much as I love Re:Coded (I love Re:Coded), I have my doubts they'll ever get addressed within the Kingdom Hearts series. I love Re:Coded (I love Re:Coded), but the datascape's mostly served its purpose in the series, as far as I'm aware. But I love this game and I want it addressed! So after much deliberation and consideration, I've come up with the likely conclusions, and built a story around it. This takes place very soon after the end of Re:Coded, and essentially is supposed to be a continuation. Exploring from where we left off, putting things together. There's one thing, one slight change from the original game in here. We haven't gotten to it yet, I'll say something when we do, but you'll probably know it when you see it.
> 
> I lead a busy life (I'm a college student) and I've got like two other ongoing series right now as well (they're not Kingdom Hearts, sorry to say) so this won't update as often as I'd like. Hopefully it's not too infrequent. I hope you enjoy this as much as I am!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riku has no chill

A voice spoke in the darkness.

“Everything is finally as it should be.”

Riku looked around for the source. He couldn’t see them, but he could recognize that voice any day. Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness. A chill ran down his spine. If he never him, it would be too soon.

“The journal is back to normal, and there’s nothing left to worry about.”

It was the same voice again, but it had moved somewhere else. Riku turned to face it, but Ansem wasn’t there, either. No one was there.

“That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

Ansem’s voice moved again. Riku turned again but wasn’t too surprised when no one was there. Was Ansem really even here? Or was he just imagining it? Just…dreaming?

“Don’t forget, Riku. If the journal’s back to normal, then that means I’m here, too.”

Ansem appeared directly in front of him, with little warning. Riku gasped and fell backwards with surprise. Was this real? How did Ansem know about the journal? “Everything’s finally the way it should be. I won’t let you change that. I won’t let you touch this world!”

“You think you can stop me?” Ansem laughed. “It’s in my nature to interfere, boy. You and your friend both have things I want, and whatever you say, they’ll be mine.”

“And it’s my job to keep the journal safe,” Riku retorted. “And I will, whatever it takes.”

Ansem laughed again. “Try, if you like. The future is already written. This world will be-”

“-awake, Riku?”

* * *

Riku blinked his eyes open. There was Sora, standing above him, waving a hand in front of Riku’s face. As Riku focused on Sora, a smile lit up Sora’s face.

“There we go! Good morning, sleepyhead!” Sora laughed. “Isn’t ‘goofing off’ and 'sleeping on the job’ supposed to be my thing?” He made air quotes as he said this, his voice dipping along with them to mock Riku.

Riku laughed along with him, rolling his eyes. “It must be contagious,” he responded. “But don’t expect it too much. One Sora’s plenty already.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sora was pouting, but the lightness in his tone betrayed him. A moment later, the two were laughing again.

“It’s no big deal,” Sora said as Riku stood up. “I was asleep, too. Guess we tired ourselves out working on the raft.” He shot him a cheeky grin, to which Riku answered with a friendly shove. “You slept longer, though.”

“We deserved a break. The raft’s coming along nicely,” Riku said. “Can’t be more than a few days before she’s ready to set sail.”

“Breaks? Naps?” Sora squinted, eyeing Riku carefully. “Are you sure you’re the real Riku?”

Riku rolled his eyes. “Break’s over, smart guy. We need to get the last of it put together so we can start gathering supplies tomorrow. Race you there.” Before Sora could protest, Riku was already running.

It’d been awhile since the whole bug and message deal had been solved and over. Jiminy’s Journal was bug free, and nothing else strange had been popping up. The journal was locked up so no one from the outside could come in, for now. Things were going relatively well.

After the showdown in Hollow Bastion with Sora’s Heartless, and then again after the adventure in Castle Oblivion, the journal’s data had been reset. Riku was unaffected, seemingly a privilege from holding onto the journal’s original, uncorrupted data inside him. Everything else seemed to be affected, though. At least, as far as he could tell from Destiny Islands. No one remembered seeing the blocks, and Sora didn’t remember any of it. From what Riku could tell, the journal was trying now to follow its original data, albeit not quite perfect.

He and Sora were working on building on a raft, to go out and see and explore other worlds. Of course they were. It’s what they always did, before Sora’s journey started, right? Sora was the one to bring it up, saying that they should stop talking about it and actually do it. And they were close, the raft itself only needed a little more work before it was ready to sail, and all they’d need then was supplies.

They were getting close. The day the islands fell to darkness was drawing near. Riku was well aware what his part in this story was. It wasn’t what he’d do or how he felt about it anymore. But he was prepared to play his part, to follow his programming, to keep everything on track.

Everything was finally as it should be.

Riku stopped as he reached the raft, just a moment before Sora. That dream…was it really a dream? Nothing like that had happened before. It was definitely off from Riku’s data, too. And more than that, data couldn’t really dream in the first place…could it? He hadn’t at least, but he had to admit he was a poor example. Most nights, instead of sleeping, he just went to the digitalized Disney Castle and used the computer to keep an eye on things. Monitor and search. Because he didn’t need to sleep. If he did, he would’ve known by now. Sora hadn’t mentioned having any dreams that seemed out of the ordinary. And Sora was his best point of reference. After all, everything in the journal revolved around him.

But that dream…threw him off. He couldn’t be sure that it was just a dream, that it was nothing. But he couldn’t be sure that it was anything, either. Maybe data could dream, on occasion. Dreams had a tendency to play on one’s anxieties and fears. It was hard to say if it was just some dream, or truly some kind of…message of conversation involving someone that shouldn’t be here, looking as he was. He couldn’t be sure on either account.

He’d file it away in the back of his mind. There was nothing to be done now. But he’d check on it tonight, look for some anomaly in the data and see if it could be explained.

“Lost again…” Sora reached Riku’s side just a moment later and pulled him out of his thoughts. “I’ll win next time for sure.”

Riku smirked. “We’ll see about that.”

No time to think about any of that. He could analyze and over-analyze everything later, when he was at the digital Disney Castle for the night. For now, though, it was time to work on the raft. Riku had a job to do. He couldn’t get distracted, or do anything to risk throwing the journal off course. Sora would definitely notice his wandering mind, and everything would fall apart. Let the journal be as it was meant to for the first time since it was finished.

So they worked on the raft. As Riku had already noted, there wasn’t much of this left to do. They put a few more boards in place. Made sure the raft was strong enough to hold everyone and everything that would be on it. Sectioned off a small space for supplies. The last order of business for this raft was giving it a sail. Sora, despite being shorter, insisted on tying the top part. Riku was able to get in a few laughs over it, but didn’t object and tied together the bottom part of the sail. This task they finished together, and with that the raft was complete.

The raft really came together well, impressively so. The kids were far from experts, yet they had no doubt it would work exactly as they hoped. It really was too bad that the raft would never achieve its purpose.

The next day was for supplies, and the day after that, it all started. This day wasn’t over yet, but having accomplished what they’d set out to do, Riku and Sora both agreed to relax here a bit longer before heading back home. They ended up in the usual spot: the paopu tree on the small island just off the island. They took up their usual spits; Sora sat on it’s mostly horizontal trunk, and Riku leaned back standing against the trunk’s base. Together, they watched the sunset.

“So, there are other worlds out there, right?” Sora asked, breaking the silence.

Riku shrugged. “Could be,” he said. “We’ll never know by staying here.”

“But how far could a raft take us?” Riku turned to see Sora shading his eyes and squinting, as if he could see how close the nearest world us. He groaned, gave up, and leaned back. “And even if we got to another world. What would we even do there?” He leaned forward.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Riku said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Sora started leaning forward and back, rocking back and forth on the tree. Riku sighed, about to continue–

“I haven’t either,” Sora said. “But we’ll figure it out when we get there. No big deal.”

–before he was interrupted by Sora.

Sora groaned. “I don’t get all this 'other world’ stuff.” He stopped and laid back. “We’ll be okay though, as long as you get it. And Kairi, too.”

And…

Sora shot up, wide eyed. “Kairi. Where has she been? I haven’t seen her in days! We can’t leave without her. She’d be so mad if she knew that I– is she sick? Is she mad at us? Did we do something? We can’t leave without her!”

Riku blinked. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about Kairi. He was just as confused by her disappearance as Sora was. Along with keeping an eye on the data, he’d been searching the journal for data, too, with nothing to show for it. All he’d been able to do was stay quiet about it, try to follow the script. His silence didn’t mean he was unconcerned. But he had his theories. And if they were right, she would be found soon enough. After all, it was his job to find her and bring her back.

But this conversation was going way off now from the original design. Sora would’ve pointed it out eventually. And her absence was dreadfully noticeable in their conversations. It clearly wasn’t the same without her. There wasn't any coding to follow in response to this, so Riku did the only thing he could do. He went off the script.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Believe me, I wish I did. But there’s no way we’re leaving without her. We wouldn’t even know there were other worlds without her. And we can’t leave our best friend behind.” 

* * *

Riku was tempted to bang his fists against the desk, or to…well, something anyway. But he kept himself composed and calm, if just for his own benefit.

Night had fallen, and Riku had gone to the digitized Disney Town as he had done for many nights now. The computer that the castle still offered made it easy to check the journal’s data for anomalies, glitches, and anything of the sort. Ever since the last reset, the journal had had nothing of the sort, and thankfully this time was no different. That wasn’t the source of his frustration.

Monitoring the journal and protecting its data was important, and he was putting a lot of energy into that. But Riku was up to more than that when he came to the castle every night. Mostly, he’d been pouring over the data and searching for Kairi. He’d noticed her absence long ago, and that wasn’t right. She should be there, in Destiny Islands, with Sora and himself. But the journal offered no sign of her location, it was just as clueless as he. Again, tonight was no different. He still hadn’t found her. That fed into his frustration, but wasn’t the main source. Riku didn’t know for certain where she was, but he had guesses and ideas. Once the islands fell to darkness, he could start acting on those guesses. He’d find her soon enough. That’s what he was supposed to do regardless. It was just hard to wait; he missed her.

The main source of this frustration was something new: Ansem.

Before whatever had happened earlier, be it a dream or something else, Riku hadn’t really thought about Ansem. Sure, Ansem hadn’t shown himself during the previous adventures in the journal. He’d kept quiet, almost suspiciously so, but Riku just figured they’d lucked out and moved on. But the conversation was concerning. And to ease his worries, he’d scanned the journal for Ansem.

He couldn’t find where Ansem was in the data right now either. Considering Ansem should’ve been on Destiny Islands, and that he shouldn’t even be that hard to miss, that was alarming.

And now that he thought about it, Ansem had had a body in that conversation, was in his own form, when it was too early for him to have a body yet. Too early to take on that form.

Furthermore, this wasn’t just some fluke. Were it anyone else doing these searches, they could’ve just messed up, missed something, or done something wrong. But Riku might as well be the journal itself. He knew the journal like no one else, not even its author. This was no mistake. If Riku couldn’t locate someone in the data, they couldn’t be located.

He really hoped that had just been a dream. He really hoped that there was some reasonable explanation for this. Perhaps Ansem couldn’t be located until he had a body? Perhaps the journal didn’t have the data to locate him this early on? Something like that.

Riku took a deep breath. He was calm. There wasn’t any point getting upset this early on. There was still plenty of time to figure it all out.

No reason to overreact, like he almost had. It was under control.

He’d be leaving the island within a day regardless. He still had a role to play, and he was determined to play it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit, 7/26/17: made some really minor changes, fixed some typos, that sort of thing. new chapter coming soon!!


	2. Exception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go almost as expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took longer than i wanted it to. sorry. it's been a crazy couple of months. i really do care a lot about this story and want it to keep going, but i'm not very fast. 
> 
> hopefully the next chapter won't take so long, but i won't promise anything. but there will be a next chapter!

This was it. Today would be the last day they worked on the raft, or to be more exact with the raft finished, today would be the last day of collecting supplies before heading out towards adventure. The raft held up well overnight. It was still there and standing, as Riku expected.

"So what kind of supplies do we need, again?" Sora asked as he and Riku walked towards the back area of the island. "Food and water?"

"Yeah, that about sums it up," Riku confirmed. "Not just any water, though. We can't drink water from the ocean."

"I know, I know." Sora rolled his eyes. "We'll get it from the spring, not the ocean. I know, Riku."

Once the pair reached the cove, they had a good view of the raft. Riku stared down at it, the sight of the raft bringing something to the forefront of his mind. "Hey, Sora. Our raft still needs a name. Let's see...how about Highwind? What would you call it?"

"Me? Well, hmm..." Sora gave it a good thought. "Excalibur!"

They had reached a difference in opinions. Neither would back down now. Riku grinned at Sora. "Hey, how about..."

"...the usual?" Sora grinned back at him, the same thing on both of their minds.

"Let's do it!"

"Alright. The usual rules apply," Sora decided. It looked like he was deciding the usual's specifics this go around. Usually, he wouldn't be the one to do so, but he filled in without a second thought. "We can take any route we want. First one to tag the tree and make it back here wins. All we need now is a judge..." He visibly deflated as he surveyed the area. "Seriously, where is she?"

"We won't leave without her. Don't worry." Riku reached out and placed a hand on Sora's shoulder. "Speaking of...we still haven't figured out the prize. If I win, I get to share a paopu with Kairi."

Sora blinked. "Huh?"

"Deal? The winner gets to share a paopu with Kairi," he confirmed.

"Wha...? Wait a minute..." Sora waved his hands negatively.

He was too late. The race was already starting. With the starting line next to the door leading to the main part of the island, the track of their race included most of the cove. Riku had a bit of a head start, and was already running across the bridge. Sora caught up fast, however. He stepped on a weak part of the bridge that Riku had avoided, sending it tumbling to the ground behind them. Neither of them were fazed. They kept going, leaving the bridge. From there, Riku and Sora started to take different routes on the track. Riku stuck with the ground route. Weaving between the trees, he ran across the sand to an upcoming hill. Sora began to take a higher road. Using a ladder, he climbed up a small tower to a zipline. The ladder prevented any further progress, but the zip line would still take him to the hill Riku was running to faster than either of them course run. The two were still about neck and neck as the ran up the hill. Jumping from one ledge to the next, they tagged the tree at about the same time.

Now it was a matter of getting back. They were essentially turning around and going back where they started, but there was only one route from here that was the fastest: jumping across the tops of the trees. This was a bit more difficult than it sounded: the treetops of the coconut trees on the island weren't exactly spacious, and since this was a race, speed often lead to a downgrade in accuracy. One wrong jump could mean an automatic last place finish. But Sora and Riku were determined not to let this deter them. Without a second thought, they began jumping across the treetops, still neck and neck. They were nearly at the bridge, no clear winner yet.

A loud "THUMP" sounded from the ground below.

Sora had misjudged one of the last jumps before the bridge, and landed on the ground instead of in the trees. He rushed as fast as he could to make up the lost time, but it was too late. Riku was already waiting at the finish line.

Sighing, Sora stopped beside Riku. "Now the score's..." He scratched his cheek. "What's the score, again? I lost track."

"Have I won that many times already?" Riku couldn't keep a smile off his face. "Maybe I should start going easy on you." Sora scowled at him, but he just laughed it off. "Man, lighten up a little. It's just a name."

"Yeah...you're right," Sora told him. He tried to wipe the scowl off his face. "Who needs to keep score, anyway? We're still friends no matter who wins, right?"

The race aside, getting all the supplies they needed was easy. Much easier than working on the raft. Riku and Sora split up what they needed to get; Sora mostly got things on land and close to it, and Riku...caught fish. They'd need quite a few fish on the journey.

Well, need was a relative term. But Riku was the only one that knew the raft wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't about to tell Sora that, and they couldn't just not get supplies. The three of them had planned out this journey for so long, it was a shame everything would play out so differently.

Tonight, the real journey would start, just as it should.

* * *

"You hold all the cards in your hand, but you still refuse to accept the facts."

There it was. Riku could hear Ansem's voice again, just as he was starting to forget their conversation the day before. He had decided it was some glitch, a minor malfunction perhaps, but it seemed that wasn't the case after all.

"What are you talking about?" Riku asked. He spoke to a random direction in the darkness, since he couldn't see Ansem.

"You know what I'm talking about," Ansem told him. "You know exactly what's wrong, yet you choose to convince yourself that everything is in order."

Data should not be able to dream. Yet, the last time Ansem spoke, Riku had been under the pretense of a nap. Despite the evidence proving otherwise, he seemed to be dreaming once again. This wasn't an event from the journal. That was clear. What exactly was this, then? When had he even fallen asleep?

Riku frowned, trying to put together two puzzles at once. "Are you...talking about Kairi?"

"Some of pieces are missing," Ansem said. "Only a fool would think the journey ahead would follow the journal's instructions. And for that fool, only darkness waits."

Kairi was vital to everything. But she wasn't the only person missing, was she? Ansem was supposed to be on the island as well. He couldn't speak for Sora, but Riku hadn't found any trace of him on the island whatsoever, and he hadn't been able to track his whereabouts in the journal. Ansem...was right. This was different. If Riku wanted to think everything was okay...he really was a fool. What was he supposed to do, then? Fix it? Again?

"What answer are you trying to point me to?" Riku asked. "Why are you acting like you're trying to help me, anyway?"

No matter what Ansem said, even if he was right, he could not be trusted. Not even in a dream.

"This is merely an exchange of information," Ansem responded. "You have information that will help me as well. Soon I will have it."

"I'll never help you!"

"You won't have to," Ansem declared. "I will take what I desire, and you and the rest of the world will fall into darkness."

* * *

A bright light ahead of him brought Riku back to himself.

He didn't feel like he'd been asleep. His eyes hadn't even been closed. It was more like his mind had just wandered on its own, and now he was back.

Back to where?

The last thing Riku remembered was gathering supplies for the journey on the raft. It had been daytime. Now, he was alone in a cave. The Secret Place, if the drawings on the wall were any indication. He couldn't see the sky, but flags in the island's data told him it was now nighttime. It was dark out, he was in a dark cave, yet light was the only thing Riku could see. It had to be the door. Of course. The door was open. He was supposed to open the door himself, so it made sense.

Why couldn't he remember opening the door? How long had Riku been talking to some imaginary Ansem? What happened during that time?

The light was gone as quickly as it had first blinded him. Light faded back into darkness, the open door only giving off a soft glow. In the darkness, one thing was clear. There was no way they were going to follow the journal's original path. Too many variables were off. This was something different. Another quest to put the journal back to normal.

It was time to break off the journal's original programming. It was time to stop leaving Sora in the dark. They weren't done fixing the journal after all.

"Riku?! Kairi?!"

There he was. Riku ran out of the cave and nearly into Sora, who had been just about to enter.

"Riku!" Sora jumped before pointing to a swirling void of darkness in the sky. "What's that? What's going on?!"

"...I don't know," Riku admitted. He reached up and pulled Sora's arm down. "I don't know what's about to happen. But we'll face it together. We'll find Kairi, and we'll figure this out. I'll explain as much as I can when I'm able to, Sora. I promise."

"I...I have no idea what you're talking about, but..." Sora nodded. "I trust you, Riku."

"No matter what, we can't get separated," Riku told him. "We have to stick together."

He wrapped a hand around Sora's wrist. Without a second to spare, the two were flung up together into the sky, into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter's more of the previous chapter being all "it's jiminy's journal, let's quote kingdom hearts 1 word for word and do everything like in kingdom hearts 1" but this should be the last of that, sorry! At least for awhile, we're really going to start breaking away from that next chapter.


	3. Synergy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We might have a really big problem on our hands with this here journal.

Riku awoke into a world of darkness.

Lazily opening his eyes, he looked around, but there was nothing to be seen. Nothing to be heard. But as he roused himself, got all his senses working again, he realized he could feel something. Something on his chest. It was small, wet, and moving all over him. Then he realized he could smell something. It wasn't an overly familiar smell, but one that he'd encountered enough times to recognize. A dog?

Before he could figure out how to react, he heard something. A groan, from someone else waking up. The dog must've heard it at the same time as him, because it immediately left him.

Riku reached up to his face and pushed something back. There, now he could see, too.

The world was cast in very dim lights. Everything surrounding him seemed to be brown, from the ground to the wood to the buildings to the rocks. This must be Traverse Town. Riku himself was somewhere between sitting and laying down against a building. It looked like he was in some back alleyway. Sora was waking up next to him, and Pluto was licking Sora's face, trying to wake him up faster.

It worked out. They were able to end up in the same place after Destiny Islands fell into darkness. Riku was glad they were here, and not Hollow Bastion. The last thing he wanted right now was to deal with Maleficent.

(At this point, he noticed he still had a hold on Sora's arm. He quickly released it and pulled his arm back to his own self.)

Next to him, Sora was...well, going through the routine, at this point. Pluto jumped on him to wake him up and ran, Sora chased him, Sora realized he was somewhere new and just...stood there, looking around, trying to figure things out. Riku stood up (more slowly than Sora had, he must've had a rough landing) and followed him.

"...Where are we?" Sora asked as Riku approached. "What happened to our home? Our island?"

"It's gone," Riku replied quietly. Sora turned to face him, a puzzled expression on his face. "The islands, our friends and family, everything was swallowed up by the darkness."

"What about Kairi?" Sora pressed.

"She should be okay." Sora took a deep breath and closed his eyes, relaxing a bit with the news. "She wasn't there. She wasn't...anywhere on the islands. She's probably out there somewhere, waiting for us to find her. She'll be okay, Sora. I promise."

"Good. I was worried..." After a brief pause, Sora opened his eyes again. "I have no idea what's going on. But before, you said you'd explain everything, right? Do _you_ know what's going on, Riku?"

Riku scratched at an itch on the back of his head. "I...might have some idea. But you're right, I said I'd explain everything. The sooner we get to that, the better, so I might as well start. It's a long story, though. I'm not sure where to even begin."

Once he'd agreed to start explaining everything to Sora, the two walked back to the alley they'd awoken in. They knew no one else was there, so it would be less likely there for something to distract them. They both sat down on opposite sides of the small alleyway, backs against the walls.

"That's okay. I'm not in any rush," Sora told him. "Why don't we start with...where did your clothes come from? I've never seen you wear that before."

Riku looked down. Oh, of course. The normal outfit that "Riku" would wear was covered by his black coat, invisible. He hadn't thought about it at the time, but it explained why he could see when he woke up. His hood must've been covering his eyes.

"Oh. The coat. I didn't even realize I was wearing this," he noted verbally. "If you're wearing it, it's supposed to protect your heart from darkness." Darkness, he knew firsthand, was a dangerous thing to traverse without protection. It was odd, though. Riku was only data; he didn't have a heart that should need protection from darkness. Then again, the journal's original contents were stored in his data. Maybe that's what the coat was for, to protect that data. He couldn't say for sure, but there was no point in bringing any of that now and just confusing Sora. "As for where it came from, it's hard to say," he went on. "I'm not even sure why I have it at all. But I got it when this whole mess started."

"Is what you're talking about related to why Kairi's been missing?" Sora pressed.

"I think so," Riku said. "There's a chance that it isn't, but it's pretty low."

"...I want to help," Sora decided. "Whatever's going on, it's something you want to deal with, so I already wanted to help. If Kairi's involved, too, I'm only more certain. We'll fix it, no matter what."

Riku frowned. "It might be dangerous. I don't want to put you in danger, especially when you don't know anything."

"Then tell me. Tell me what's going on, so I can help."

So he explained. Riku explained everything to Sora as best that he could. He explained the nature of their world, the world they were in, the worlds they could visit. The datascape. He explained exactly what that meant-- how they were personifications of writings from a journal. That their stories and lives were already written out for them, that they were only to follow that script. He explained that they weren't following that script, hadn't for some time now. He explained that the journal had been forcibly altered with some nasty results. He explained those results: the adventure they had just finished fixing the journal's bugs and uncovering added data. He explained that Sora couldn't remember, shouldn't remember, that his memory had been wiped of everything multiple times. No one should remember. The journal should be fixed, everything back to normal.

"...except it's not." Riku frowned, staring at his feet. "I tried to keep things going like it was, but it's clearly not. Kairi's missing. She's been missing, since the data was tampered with I think. She does go missing according to the journal, and I'm supposed to find her, so I thought that was all it was. But she shouldn't have gone missing before we left the islands, and the fact that you noticed she was gone means something's up.

"It's not just that, either. There's also the fact that we're both here, right now. When the islands fall into darkness, we're not supposed to end up in the same world. You show up here, and I show up...somewhere else. We could both freely move through the journal, to other worlds, during out last adventure. That's something I can still do, but I didn't do that to show up here. The journal let me follow you here, so there must be something wrong. And then, it's not as concrete as any other reason that the journal isn't fixed, but... I've been having weird dreams, the past couple of days. I don't know what they mean, but they're not dreams I'm supposed to have. They mean something, I'm sure, but I haven't figured it out yet.

"Something's still wrong with the datascape." He looked up at Sora, frown unchanging. "And if you want to help, then it's our job to fix it. To finish a task we didn't complete before."

Sora, for lack of a better word, was overwhelmed.

It was a lot of information to take in in a short time. Riku hadn't gone into to many details, just that these adventures happened, how they started, and how they ended. More than that all at once would probably be too much for Sora. Clearly this was enough for now: Sora was just staring at him blankly, desperately trying to process everything he'd heard as fast as he could. And that would take time, because all that knowledge would force Sora to change how he thought, how he perceived everything. Not just that, Riku had a bad feeling that something would happen soon. Something that would, at least, interrupt him, and he didn't want to stop explaining anything only halfway. When things were safe and calm, maybe, he could say more, but right now, he had no idea what was going on, what was about to happen.

It took over a minute for Sora to find his words. His expression made it clear he was still trying to figure things out. But there was still something left unanswered, something that he couldn't possibly figure out given what he knew, so he forced it out. "Then...if I don't remember...any of it, and I'm not supposed to, why...can you? Why do you remember everything?"

"That's..." It was an easy enough explanation. Much simpler and shorter than the explanations Riku had already given. Yet, it tasted sour in the back of his throat. He was supposed to be Riku, just Riku, and nothing more, and that used to be all he was. Sora had told him multiple times in their previous adventure that he was still Riku, no matter what, but it wasn't exactly that simple. Simple enough for Sora, maybe, but not him. "Riku" shouldn't have remembered anything that happened before the journal reset. "Riku" shouldn't be holding onto the journal's original contents, shouldn't already know everything that was supposed to happen. He wasn't "Jiminy's Journal" either, obviously. He still had the abilities and some of the personality Riku should have. But it didn't feel right.

He didn't like the thought of telling Sora that he wasn't who Sora thought he was. He didn't like the thought of telling Sora that he wasn't actually Sora's best friend.

In a stroke of luck, whether good or bad, Riku didn't get the chance.

The faintest hint of zeroes and ones waved over the buildings around them. They were gone as quickly as they came, but Riku immediately picked up what was happening. Traverse Town's system state had just changed. Until now, the town had been in a more peaceful mode. Now, everything had just shifted into combat. Riku jumped to his feet, scanning the area for any threats. Sora looked on.

The lights around them flickered. Once they stopped, they could both see several dark shapes surrounding them. Shadows molded themselves out of the shapes. Heartless were all around them.

"Heartless," Riku confirmed under his breath as Sora scrambled to his feet. "In the First District, too..." He cast a glance up to where he'd see the door leading to the Second District if the alley weren't blocking his vision.

Riku held up his left hand and cast a Barrier between the Heartless, and himself and Sora. Soul Eater materialized in his other hand in a wave of darkness, ready to counter.

Traverse Town's First District was normally a safe spot. With no Heartless and no one to fight, it was the only place where the residents could safely stay. Even when the journal had filled with bugs, this was an unusual event.

Making any assumptions at this point, however, was dangerous. There's one point in the journal's original data where this should have been happening: when Sora first arrived at Traverse Town. Heartless surged the First District then in pursuit of Sora's Keyblade. Perhaps this was just a side effect of those events.

Regardless, why didn't matter so much as what.

"Did you...call those things Heartless?" Sora asked. He was now standing as well, behind Riku in relation to the Heartless. "What are those things?"

"They're bad news," Riku responded. "These ones are called Shadows. Heartless are creatures born out of the darkness in people's hearts. They seek out the hearts of others and will try to take them. They don't have any sentience of their own, but will follow the command of stronger forces of darkness. Ultimately, their search for hearts will make people and entire worlds fall into darkness. They're...the reason the islands are...gone."

"If they're after hearts...we can't let them run into anyone in town," Sora said. "We have to stop them."

"Then we're on the same page." Riku's grasp on Soul Eater tightened, his gaze firmly set on the Heartless ahead of them. "Unfortunately, most weapons are useless against them. This sword is in a minority; small wooden swords won't cut it here."

To say Sora couldn't do anything would be inaccurate. Sora was more powerful, the stronger of the two, and his help here would be invaluable. But Riku didn't want to force it. To force him into anything. Moments before, he'd just dropped a huge bomb on Sora: their lives were somewhat laid out for them like a script, and Sora's memories and recollection of events had been reset a few times now. Sora still had to be reeling from that, processing what it all meant. The last thing Riku wanted to do was to make things more complicated and divide his attention. Besides, Riku had kept things brief, and the Keyblade hadn't really come up. He wasn't exactly keeping it a secret or anything, but explaining that now would be a bit rushed and awkward. (But depending on what happened now, he might have to anyway.)

Riku went on, "Shadows are one of the weaker types of Heartless. Born out of smaller amounts of darkness. They're not a huge threat, so don't worry about me. I can take them on."

Two Shadows struck out with their claws. Both hit Riku's barrier and recoiled, stunned. Riku swung Soul Eater around in a circle in a counterattack, destroying both Shadows but making sure to avoid Sora. A few Shadows still stood ahead. Riku launched a fire attack at them before they could move, and the alley was cleared out.

"This way!" he called out to Sora. Using a box as a stepping stool, they made their way towards the Second District pathway. Heartless were everywhere here, too: mostly Shadows, with a couple of Soldiers mixed in.

"They're everywhere..." Sora was still behind Riku, peeking out with eyes opened wide. "Is there anyway I can help? I don't know where you got your sword, but all I have is..." Riku looked over his shoulder as Sora pulled out his wooden sword they'd made together on the islands. He didn't have to say anything; Sora seemed to already know as he did that it would be useless in this situation. But as they both looked on, the sword began to glow. A flash of ones and zeroes washed over it, and it stopped glowing as the sword transformed. Now, Sora was holding the Zero/One Keyblade in his hands.

"What's this?!" Sora looked up at Riku.

"The Keyblade," Riku said. "It's a powerful weapon, to fight back against the darkness. It'll easily fight back against the Heartless, but it's a double-edged sword: the Heartless fear the keyblade and seek it out to try to destroy it." Riku's gaze whipped forward to look ahead at the Heartless. He had to keep an eye on them. "The power you hold, Sora, is unlike anything the journal's ever seen. We're made of data, but the weapon in your hands was not. You weren't programmed with that Keyblade. You earned it because your heart is strong. And no matter how many times the journal wipes your memory, you still have that power. I didn't want to push you into the deep end so quickly, not again. But if you want to fight back, you're more than capable."

Sora grinned behind him. "We'll do it together."

With that, the two sprang into the fray. Riku stuck with physical attacks. Power wasn't necessary for Soldiers and Shadows, so he was more focused on lasting the fight. Besides, most of his abilities came from the darkness. A few like Soul Eater were a necessity, but he didn't want to rely on the darkness any more than that. He rushed forward and sliced through two Shadows, which faded back into darkness. A row of Heartless approached him, and he whipped his weapon in an arc, destroying them before he could attack.

Sora had a variety of abilities at his disposal. His memories had been reset, but he hadn't lost any of his fighting ability. After Riku jumped in, Sora pointed his Keyblade and launched a Triple Blizzaga at a Soldier behind Riku. Sora spun around to face a cluster of Shadows, and launched a perfectly aimed Judgement Triad. The two of them worked together, combined their strengths, and soon, the First District was devoid of Heartless.

"We did it..." Sora turned around and shot Riku a grin. "I don't know where I learned to fight like that, but as long as we work together, we can take these things."

Riku smiled. "Yeah, you're right," he agreed.

The victory was short-lived. As soon as Riku stopped speaking, darkness rolled in around them again. This time, however, the Heartless came in different types, forms more powerful than should be here. Angel Stars, Darkballs, Invisibles, nothing that should be appearing this early in Sora's intended journey.

"More Heartless?" Sora asked. "These ones look different. What's going on? Riku?"

Riku was frozen. This shouldn't be happening. These Heartless shouldn't be here. How did they get here? Why were they here? Ideas, theories ran through his head, but nothing connected. He couldn't figure it out. Not here. They didn't have the luxury to sit down and thing. After a second, he realized Sora was talking, and shook himself out of his thoughts.

"I don't know," he admitted. "But remember what I said about things definitely not being right here? This is one of them. These Heartless aren't supposed to be here."

"Then we'll have to take care of that," Sora replied.

They jumped back into action. Sora was the first to act. They were both lucky that Sora hadn't lost any of his abilities when he was reset. He launched a Magnega spell in the air just ahead of him, pulling several Heartless into one spot. Then he ran forward and slammed his Keyblade into the ground, sending a beam of light straight up. With a followup of a Thundaga spell, this group of Heartless was finished off. Sora ran ahead to another cluster of Heartless and unleashed a powerful Energy Bomb, disintegrating them instantly.

Riku joined him soon after. Sora's concentration was focused on the Heartless he was targeting, but anything behind him was in his blind spot. That's exactly where a Darkball was. Chomping its teeth eagerly, it was rushing ahead to get in a hit. Riku couldn't let that happen. Stretching out his hand, he tried to unleash a Blizzard spell to distract it, change its target. By some kind of instinct, however, the spell became Dark Firaga, homing in on the Darkball. It was unintentional, but it still worked. The Darkball stopped its attack and turned to face Riku.

Riku intended to finish off the Darkball from there, but he was still distracted trying to figure out what was going on, and his blind spot was as big as Sora's. An Invisible slashed a sword at his back and his Soul Eater fell out of his grasp, spinning forward. The Darkball he was focused on rushed him and he was knocked down.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sora saw Riku's weapon spin past him. "Riku!" He turned around and passed his Keyblade to Riku, then turned again and leaped forward to pick up the Soul Eater.

Riku propped himself up in time to catch the Keyblade in his dominant hand. For half a second, he hesitated. Unlike the Keyblade mentioned in the journal, this one was different. It was Sora's, not the Keyblade Riku had been meant to wield, and he wasn't sure if it would let him use it. But for the moment it stayed, so he'd use that to his advantage. Swinging his whole body around, he knocked the Heartless surrounding him into the air. He then jumped into the air after them and slammed them into the ground, destroying them.

Zero/One felt different in his hand than the Kingdom Key. It was lighter, and had a different feel to it, but it was much more powerful.

Meanwhile, Sora was far less used to Riku's weapon than Riku was with his. Rather than using Soul Eater to attack, Sora adjusted by solely using it to cast spells. Powerful Aeroga spells took out several Heartless, and an even stronger Mega Flare took out the rest. This time, the First District was truly safe from Heartless.

"We did it...again." Sora tossed Soul Eater back to Riku. At the same time, the Keyblade disappeared from Riku's hand and reappeared into his own.

"Looks like we did it for good this time," Riku agreed. "But--"

Before he could continue, a voice spoke. Neither of them were speaking, and Riku could tell no one else was in the First District. Rather, it seemed to be some kind of message. Aimed at Traverse Town? Or maybe just to the two of them. All he could be sure of was what it said.

_Riku, are you there?_

"Who's that?" It was clear that Sora heard the message as well. "Is there someone else here?"

"There shouldn't be," Riku told him. Hoping he was on the right track, he looked up at the sky. "Yeah, I'm here."

_Oh, good! I've been looking for you everywhere. I'm glad I found you. I need your help._

"With what?"

_There's a bunch of Heartless here. They're everywhere, and they shouldn't be here. Not in this world, not like this, anyway. I'm really sorry, but I don't think it's safe for me to stay here. They could break into this room any second, I can't hold out much longer. I'm sure I'm not the only one having trouble with them._

"Do you...know who this is?" Sora was staring at Riku, looking completely lost. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

It was just like Sora to want to help even complete strangers, wasn't it? But Riku was completely on board. "I think I know who's asking for help. And if I'm right, we should be able to help them."

"Great!" Sora grinned. "Then lead the way."

There were multiple people who could contact Riku like this, and there were multiple people who were probably having trouble with Heartless, if the fight that just occurred was any indication. However, Riku could only think of one person who would make contact this way and know where Heartless should and shouldn't be.

"Follow me," he said. Focusing on the data signature of the area he assumed was the source of the message, Riku created a portal of data. He walked through, and Sora followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the zero/one keyblade is my favorite in re:coded if not overall so if you think you're going to see data sora use any other keyblade you're wrong! he uses soul eater for a whole minute and that's the closest you get here.
> 
> i didn't want to sit through riku explaining everything to sora for too long, and i'm sorry about that, but basically the information sora has at this point is: a few basics of the original journey, how the journey to fix the journal started and ended, kairi's missing, and things are still going bad here. he's operating on very little information but he's here to help anyway. thank goodness he keeps all his abilities even after his memory's reset.
> 
> there's been some small changes to the first two chapters! very small. if you've already read them then you don't really need to go back and reread them, i just wanted to change how some ideas were coming across a bit, and then found a couple of typos. hope things are going well for you all!
> 
> Edit (6/21/18): There was a glaring inconsistency between this chapter and chapter 4. That's what I get for taking so long to update, I suppose! I've fixed it on this chapter's end so this chapter now fits the events of chapter 4. It's just a few lines changed towards the end of this chapter, but it makes a world of difference to me at least. Now one of our friends here in this story isn't a huge liar anymore. Thanks, [redacted].


	4. Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More and more mysteries pile up. Riku and Sora gain some valuable allies.

Following his hypothesis, Riku moved their data out of Traverse Town, and into Castle Oblivion.

Castle Oblivion…was not a world the journal was supposed to contain, yet here it was and here it remained. It was added after everything ended by Namine, to give information and hints about the future. That purpose was finished, but now it held a new purpose.

As soon as their move to Castle Oblivion was complete, Riku immediately noticed they weren’t alone. Heartless filled the castle’s main hall, swarming from each corner. They were trying to make their way towards a door, the door to go further into the castle, but something held them off. Someone, wrapped in a black coat, the hood obscuring their face. They fought the heartless off with two keyblades in their hands, keeping them away from the door.

Riku acted immediately. Holding Soul Eater up in the air, he cast Stopra, halting most of the Heartless closest to the door. The person in the black coat stood still, staring at the two of them.

“It’s about time,” they said simply. “I’ve been holding them off, but I can’t keep this up forever.” Their head jerked back, gesturing towards the door. “She’s all alone in there. She needs help. Please.”

Riku nodded. “Stay here, Sora. Help keep the Heartless away from the door. I’ll be back soon.”

“I don’t need help!” the black-coated figure protested, to no avail.

“Huh? But…where are we? Who is this person? Who are you leaving to help?” Sora asked.

"Someone must really enjoy pushing that reset button," the black-coated figure snorted.

“There’s no time.” Riku sighed. “I’ll explain later. Just hang in there for a little while.”

At that, the spell wore off. Heartless began moving once again, trying to attack, trying to get closer to the door. Around Riku, Sora and their other comrade began fighting them off, keeping them away. Riku closed his eyes and tapped into the world’s data. Once he found what he was looking for, a card appeared in his hand: the card for Castle Oblivion. Riku held it up to the door, and the door pulled him into another room’s data.

He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect in this room. Would it be the same as always? Had it changed? Would it be empty? But no, instead he immediately found himself facing more Heartless. Much fewer Heartless than the main hall, thankfully. With a few swift strikes, they were vanquished, for now.

“Riku!”

Spinning around, Riku spotted Namine, peeking out from behind the pod in the center of the room. Thankfully, the Heartless that had managed to invade this room hadn't gotten much farther than the door; she was safe. Riku nodded, and Namine came out from behind the pod, hands folded behind her back. She stopped in front of him, looking up at him with a frown.

"Why are the Heartless here?" Riku asked, looking around. "They shouldn't be invading this world like this. They shouldn't even be able to access it."

Each room in Castle Oblivion was created using cards, which were made based on the data Sora fixed in their previous adventure. The card Riku had used now was the same card Sora had used back then to access this room -- Castle Oblivion's data hadn't been reset since it wasn't supposed to exist in the journal in the first place. When Sora had last visited this world, any Heartless he encountered were 'illusions' made from that fixed data, not actual Heartless. No matter how Riku looked at it, there shouldn't be any Heartless here, neither in the main hall nor this room. Yet here they were.

Was this...glitch in Castle Oblivion's data related to the incident in Traverse Town? Riku had his guess, but it was too soon to say for sure.

"I was hoping you knew the answer to that." Namine sighed. "I wish I could help you, but I don't know. There's been no sign of bugs anywhere in the journal, and none of the Heartless seem to be bugged, so it shouldn't be my fault this time."

"Whatever is going on, this world isn't safe. We can't stay here." Riku frowned. "We need to find somewhere where we can think this through without getting distracted by more Heartless." As he said this, a Soldier Heartless made its way through the door; Riku quickly blasted it with a Blizzara spell, and it was destroyed. "There's one place where we might be able to find some answers, but I don't know for certain that it's any safer than this world. I think it's worth the risk to check, though. It has the most potential of any location in the journal to be safe, and it'll be easier to keep Heatless away there than it is here."

Namine nodded. "We should go, then. We can't afford to waste time here."

The two of them went back to the main hall. The Heartless swarm hadn't gotten any smaller than when Riku arrived, though this wasn't from lack of effort. Sora and his ally were fighting hard, taking down as many Heartless as they could. But for every Heartless they destroyed, another Heartless seemed to appear just as quickly. They couldn't fight them all off even if Riku jumped in. Especially with Namine here, they couldn't risk her safety.

"We can't keep this up!" the dark-coated figure yelled to Riku. "We have to get out of here!"

"I know!"

Riku closed his eyes and looked in the data for the new location he had in mind. Destiny Islands was out, that world was destroyed. Traverse Town obviously wasn't an option. Heartless weren't supposed to appear outside of the games in Olympus Coliseum, but after what just happened with Castle Oblivion, Riku couldn't trust that. Wonderland, Agrabah, Hollow Bastion... No, the place Riku had in mind was somewhere that wasn't supposed to be in the journal, like Castle Oblivion. Castle Oblivion had been added in later on for a purpose, but Riku had imported this other world into the journal himself. Like Castle Oblivion, this world hadn't been reset, since it wasn't supposed to be here. It was a world he'd been to many times recently, and would hopefully be the easiest place to look into this situation. There hadn't been any Heartless there the last time Riku was there, but that easily could have changed since then. He just had to hope for the best. Once they got there, they could keep Heartless out, at least.

It only took Riku a second to locate his destination.

Riku sent the data for all four of them to Disney Castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really let this one fall to the wayside, huh? sorry about that, life just kinda took over, ended up focusing on other things for awhile, but i really want to get back to this one. hope you don't mind a bit of a shorter chapter, but it felt right to leave off here for now.
> 
> we've finally reached that, uh, canon divergence, though! essentially this is a 'everyone lives' type of thing, where namine doesn't disappear from the journal's data, and our other new friend gets to remain his own person. they're both essential to our quest here, and both deserve much better than this game gave them, gosh. save these poor hurting children. the next chapter, hopefully, will come sooner than this one did.


	5. Default

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's clearly wrong here, but in order to fix it, we must first figure out what exactly is going on. After all the chaos of what's happened, it's important to take a deep breath and lay it all out. But still, one member of the four-person party barely knows or remember anything, while everyone else is fighting their own instincts on this situation...

Thankfully, in Disney Castle, no Heartless had appeared quite yet.

Riku knew it wouldn't remain that way forever. In their previous adventure, Heartless had appeared once in this very room. But this was still their safest option at the moment. This was the place where it was easiest to interact directly with the journal's programming. Quickly, he dove for the keyboard and wrote some code that would hopefully cut the Heartless off from this world. It was only a few additional lines of code, and it was impossible for him to be certain it would work perfectly, but hopefully by the time anyone figured out a way around it this would all be over. With a sigh, Riku set this new code to run and slouched forward. This would be enough for now, it had to be.

While he'd been occupied with code, Roxas stood at the ready, as if he were expecting the Heartless to show up any second. Sora just looked around, taking in the whole scene. Namine watched all three of them with her face carefully blank and her hands folded together behind her back. They remained quiet while Riku typed, and as he turned around to face them, all eyes were on him.

"We should be safe for now," he said simply. "It'll be awhile before they find a way past the barriers I have up."

Sora looked at Riku. Riku looked at Namine. Namine looked at Roxas. Roxas looked at Sora. They each cleared their throats at the same time.

"So," Roxas began.

"Before anything else, I think some introductions are in order," Sora decided, crossing his arms. "You all seem to know each other, but I only really know Riku."

Roxas laughed at that. "You really think you know him? You really think we're all great friends over here? We--"

Namine put a hand on Roxas' shoulder. When he made eye contact with her, he stopped talking, the humor erased from his face. She let go of Roxas and shot Sora a kind smile that didn't quiet seem to reach her eyes.

"You aren't exactly right, but I think it's a great idea," she told Sora, who smiled back at her. "If any of us are going to work together, we should all get to know one another, even just a little bit. You already seem to know who Riku is. My name is Namine, and this is Roxas." She paused to gesture to Roxas. "It's very nice to meet you again, Sora."

"Again?" Sora asked.

She giggled. "You know how we're digital representations of people from the outside world?" He nodded. "We're made up of memories of those people. Our unique positions allow us to hold onto those memories, remember everything that they do."

"And maybe you would, too, if those chipmunks didn't reset your data to give you your keyblade a couple of paragraphs early," Roxas cut in.

"Maybe you would," Namine agreed. "But that's not the reality of our situation. Anytime since then that the journal was supposed to go back to normal, your memory has been reset. I believe this is the third time, now, but it's good to see Riku has filled in the gaps. Riku has 'Riku's' memories from the journal, and my presence here gave the three of us a few memories our counterparts made after this journal should have been closed for good. And our counterparts all met, separately. But inside the journal..."

"That's the second time in this journal I've been inside Castle Oblivion," Riku recalled. "The first time, I didn't talk to either of you."

"Namine and I both stayed in Castle Oblivion the entire time, but...we never talked," Roxas mumbled. "I knew those memories were there, and I knew what my role should be. I stuck to my part of the castle."

"Inside the journal, the only person any of us have met is you," Namine explained. "You may not remember it, but the two of us have met, and before that you met Roxas. All we know about each other is from memories we never made. Please don't take Roxas' outburst personally. Many of his memories related to you and Riku aren't pleasant."

Roxas exhaled through his nose. "That's one way of putting it."

"So, why don't we introduce ourselves before anything else?" Namine suggested. "My name is Namine. I'm the Nobody of Kairi, what was left when she lost her heart during the journal's original events. I placed myself in this journal to deliver a message to Sora, but now that task seems to be complete. Now, I just...want to make up for the mistakes I've made."

"I'm Roxas." Roxas crossed his arms. "Former member of Organization XII, not that it matters in here. Sora's Nobody. I'm a glitch in the system, some messed up byproduct of the memories that were stored in Castle Oblivion and the journal containing data of Sora's Heartless. And since the journal follows the rules of the real world, here I am." He shrugged. "Just an illusion that shouldn't exist."

"I don't know anything about this talk of Nobodies and...my Heartless, but..." Sora put on a fake grin and waved. "I'm Sora and I have no idea what's going on right now, but I'm here to help."

"I know how that feels," Roxas whispered.

The three of them looked at Riku. He cleared his throat. "I'm Riku."

"Riku's one of my best friends!" Sora added in.

Riku frowned, but went on. "I, uh, lost my way during the journal's original events, but I'm trying to make up for it. I have some ideas about what might be happening."

"...And?" Roxas pressed. He glared daggers into Riku, who winced.

"Okay." Riku pinched the bridge of his nose. "When the data inside the journal first began to change, the journal decided to hide away its original data to keep it safe. That way, no matter what happened, the journal could eventually be reverted back to its original state. The journal decided to hide that data inside of me, so..." He took a breath. "I'm Jiminy's Journal. Nice to meet you."

"What are you talking about?" Sora asked. "You're Riku."

Riku blinked. "Didn't you--"

"Yeah, I heard what you said," Sora told him. "And I'm not saying I don't believe you, or that I don't understand what that means. I...I think I get it. But all that doesn't change who you are. You're still Riku, and you're still one of my best friends."

"You really never do change, do you?" Riku mumbled, more to himself than anyone else.

For a moment, the group stood in silence. Riku stared at the ground, Sora stared at him, and no one else seemed to know where to look. Finally, Roxas got sick of it and spoke up.

"Alright, that's over." He gestured vaguely behind him. "But something's still wrong here, the journal's still got some issues. And if we're actually going to _do anything_ about it, we need to know what's going on."

"Yeah, of course," Sora agreed.

"So if anyone's noticed anything off, now's the time to speak up," Roxas declared. "I don't care how small it is, if it's different I want to know. It's not like I care a whole lot about the journal itself, that's Riku's job, but I'd rather not become Heartless food anytime soon. And the way the journal is right now, well..." He trailed off with a shrug.

Roxas bit the inside of his cheek. He wasn't usually the type to take charge like this, but, well, it hadn't looked like anyone else was going to. As it was, he already had a lifetime of memories of no one ever giving him the answers he needed, no one besides Namine. Those memories weren't his, he wasn't about to declare he was just as much Roxas as the other Roxas, or that he was just as real as the other one, or any of that other nonsense the people from the outside world spewed out when they'd been here. He'd seen all of that, of course. But, well, he still had those memories, and he wasn't about to let himself fall into that same pattern. If anyone had ideas, they needed to speak up, or they'd have to answer to him. And he already an idea of who his first target would be; Riku'd already basically said he knew what was going on.

But it was Sora who spoke up first. "Well, there's the Heartless, right? They weren't supposed to be in that big hallway in your world, I think you said. And it's not that they weren't supposed to be in Traverse Town, but Riku said they were way more powerful than they were supposed to be. That sounds different to me."

"Well, that one was obvious," Roxas sneered.

"You did say 'anything'," Riku pointed out. Riku rolled his eyes. And it was good to bring up, too, because they needed to look at everything that was different, and see how it fit together. It didn't matter that this one was obvious, that they already knew that, it still needed to be considered.

"When I first contacted you, you were in Traverse Town," Namine mused, looking at Riku. "But shouldn't the journal have sent you to Hollow Bastion?"

"It should've," Riku agreed, "which means that the journal recognizes something's wrong, too."

"Another problem," Roxas said, jerking his head towards Sora, "is him."

"What do you mean I'm a problem?" Sora asked, pouting.

"You don't know anything," Roxas replied simply. "You don't remember anything. You have power, but you don't remember how to use it. That'll only get you so far in battle. You don't remember how the journal's supposed to be. How're you supposed to recognize what needs to be fixed, or how to fix it? Without your memories, you're in the way. You're barely better than useless."

Sora puffed out his cheeks. Namine stepped forward and put a hand on one of their shoulders each.

"If the problem is memory, maybe I can help. I may be a digital replica, but I'm all that's left of Namine anymore. And here, in the journal, I still have power over the memories of Sora and those connected to him." She looked Sora in the eyes. "Memories are never truly gone. They're just forgotten when the chains connecting them are broken. When new memories were added to the journal, the journal adapted to accommodate them along with the memories it already held. The memories of your previous journeys are still here. I can help you remember them. But I can't do it all at once, it'll be too much to bear. It'll take time."

"You can do that?" Sora asked.

Namine nodded. "Anything I can do to help," she replied. As she released Sora and Roxas, a sketchbook appeared in her hands. A crayon floated in the air next to her, and she reached out with one hand to take it before she began to draw. "There's nothing special you need to do to regain your memories. You're regaining memories, not replacing them. And, in time, you'll regain them all."

Sora nodded. "I trust you. That's how my heart feels. Take as much time as you need."

And slowly, in Sora's mind, memories of a journey past began to weave back together. His very first impression of this journey was from the destruction of his home, and it was a sharp, stinging loneliness. Memories of being together with his two best friends, and memories of losing them both in a single night, ending up in a strange land on his own.

He recognized it now, as Traverse Town.

Sora was very glad that Riku had come with him this time.

"Well," Roxas interjected, stirring Sora out of these musings. He was staring at Riku. "You said you had some ideas about what's happening, didn't you? Care to share with the rest of us?"

Riku rolled his eyes, but didn't give that question a proper response. He closed his eyes. Yeah, he had some ideas. "Kairi's missing."

"And we're going to look for her, right?" Sora pressed.

Riku nodded. "Kairi's disappearance wouldn't normally be unusual. She's supposed to disappear, in the journal's original memories, and I'm supposed to find her. The strange part about it is, she isn't supposed to be this hard to find until after our home falls to darkness. But she'd disappeared long before that."

"Now that you mention it, during the last adventure, Kairi was missing then, too," Namine mused, still drawing.

"Right. I've been looking into Kairi's disappearance for awhile. I've spent several nights in this room, digging through the journal's data for any trace of her. But she's just...gone. I can't find a sign of her," Riku told them, his voice falling flat in those last words. "If she was anywhere, I would've found her by now. I've looked everything, tried everything, believe me."

"So, the Heartless issue, Riku ended up in Traverse Town, and Kairi's gone." Roxas tilted his head. "Not much to go on. It seems like it's just...some random glitches in the journal, more than anything."

"No, I think it's much worse than that." Riku opened his eyes, staring at Roxas. He flexed his hands, closed, then open.

His gut instinct was to keep quiet, not involve and worry anyone else, to solve his own problems on his own. Of course that was his instinct, it's how he tried to handle everything. But...it never actually solved anything, never really helped anyone. He just kept falling back into darkness over and over, making everyone else fix his own messes. He couldn't do it again now. Not when everyone had so little to go off of. Not when it'd just hurt everyone all over again. Maybe this time, he could break the cycle he'd trapped himself in.

_You've come so far, yet still you understand nothing._

"Kairi's missing, but that's not the only thing," he declared. He glanced up on the computer screen. "I had the strangest dream, not too long ago."

"Oh, I had one of those, too," Sora recalled, leaning forward. "I had a cool sword, and I was fighting all sorts of weird stuff, and some voice told me to open a door. Dreams are weird."

"No, not like that." Riku put an arm on his hip. "Supposedly, data can't dream. I don't know how true that is. Maybe this was just a dream, I don't know. But I saw Ansem in my dream, and he talked to me. It sounded like he had something big planned, but he was being annoyingly cryptic about it. It's about par for the course for him."

"And what, you're gonna help him out again? Let him get away with it and turn against everyone else?" Roxas sneered.

"Roxas, you know he wouldn't do that," Namine chided.

"What about last time?" Roxas pointed out. "He worked for Maleficent and Pete."

"Not willingly. They made him do it, he didn't even get a choice," Namine insisted.

Riku shook his head. "You have a fair argument," he told Roxas. "You don't have to trust me, and I can't make you believe anything I say."

Roxas bit the inside of his cheek and slouched backwards.

"He said..." What had Ansem said? "He said Sora and I each had something he wanted," Riku muttered darkly. "And he told me I couldn't stop him. He seemed to know everything about the journal, too. It sounded like he knew things from when we fixed the journal before. But his memory should've been reset, like Sora's. I remember everything because I have the journal's memories, and you two are a special case. He shouldn't remember."

Sora frowned. "I don't know who this 'Ansem' guy is, but...that sounds bad," he speculated.

"Again, it could have just been a dream," Riku pointed out. "But soon after that I searched the journal for his data, too and I couldn't find him anywhere. He was supposed to be on the islands with us, then. So even if it was just a dream, something about him is still different, not right, and I don't like how that fits into everything else.

"If Ansem's up to something, that would explain the behavior of the Heartless. He has control over them. And during the original adventure, Ansem was gathering all the princesses of heart. Kairi's one of them. If they're both missing, he might have her already. If he's gathering the princesses again..."

"Is he after Kingdom Hearts? Or something else?" Namine wondered.

"I'm not sure," Riku admitted quietly.

"What if he hasn't found the other princesses yet?" Sora asked. "Can we find any of them, try to keep them safe? It's better than doing nothing, until we find out more. They'd be at least someone we can fine related to all this."

"Or should we go to Hollow Bastion, where he took them last time?" Riku countered.

"But you already searched the journal's data for Ansem and Kairi. That includes Hollow Bastion," Roxas said. He fidgeted with his hood, still obscuring his face even now. "We know he's not there, but we don't know about the other princesses. If we go to Hollow Bastion first, that gives Ansem time to strike. Better to leave that as a last resort, and look fo the princesses immediately."

"Sora didn't meet most of them until they reached Hollow Bastion. But there's Alice in Wonderland, and Jasmine in Agrabah." Namine paused in her drawing, looking between the other three. "The first time Sora saw Kairi was in Neverland, then she was taken to Hollow Bastion, and later she was in Traverse Town."

"Alice was captured first," Riku added.

"Then we should go there, first," Sora declared.

"I'm only going if we take Namine, too."

Riku and Sora stared at Roxas as he spoke.

"It's not safe for her here, even with Riku's added protection. You said it probably wouldn't hold out forever," Roxas recalled. "She's invaluable to this mission, not just to fix Sora's memories. We need both her and Riku's knowledge to be able to fix the journal. And...she's important to me, too. She's the only one who ever told the real Roxas the truth." He looked Namine in the eyes. "I couldn't save...her, but I can at least keep you safe."

"I..." Namine began, looking down at her sketchbook.

"Of course she's coming with us," Riku answered.

"She's our friend, we'll keep her safe," Sora told them.

Namine squeezed the crayon she was holding. "I can't fight like the rest of you. Besides giving Sora his memories back, I can't do much to help." Her voice was low, quiet, strained. "As soon as any Heartless show up, I'll just be in the way. You don't have to risk yourselves for me, Riku's knowledge is more than enough for this."

"Even if it was, I don't trust Riku as far as I can throw him," Roxas told her. "But no matter what, I trust you."

"You're doing more than enough to help," Riku said. "But if you feel like you need to do more...you'll figure something out."

"Then we're all going to Wonderland!" Sora grinned. "But first...uh, how do we get there? Where is that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeesh, this one's really talky, again... but sometimes it be like that when everyone stands around in a room and makes plans. this should hopefully be the last time of this for at least awhile, and the next time shouldn't be this long. i, uh, hope you like dialogue.
> 
> i'm super tired and super stressed and don't wanna work on this paper so...been working on this on and off along with it all, help keep myself going. at the very least this paper is due in a couple of days so like...for better or for worse it'll be done and i'll have that off my plate. and i'll be able to write more, since like, it's not like i haven't been wanting to write, but like, i've been writing so much other stuff with the summer class, but yeah, it'll be good in a couple of days. sorry for the wait, hope you enjoyed! it'll pick up again next time. more action, more drama, more....total drama action, i'm your host, coming to you weekly on cartoon network, stay tuned.


	6. Bluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang sets off to locate Alice, though there's another party whose answers they seek, and a question about this whole situation lingering in the air...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something relevant to this chapter that I'd really rather specify due to its vague nature.... For the purposes of this story, you can consider an error to be a mistake made by a developer, a fault to be a defect in a program, and a failure to be when a program behaves differently than it's supposed to. This has been relevant to previous chapters as well, but it's come to my attention that these terms are vague in the software world, and not everyone uses the same definitions. These are the ones I was taught, the ones I am using, and the ones I will continue to use.
> 
> I've sorta updated the bad summary of this fic to be marginally better. You'll also notice I've defined a number of chapters now. We're almost hitting the fourth year I've put work into this fic, and for the most part I know just about everything that's going to happen, when it will happen, and how. This is roughly how long I think the fic would be; it would be 12, but chapter '7' will be a sort of side story I wrote probably a couple of years ago for this universe, somewhat of an interlude(?), I suppose, that pushes it up to 13. Based on pacing and such, this number of chapters may change, but if it does it will probably go up. I do not expect there to be any less chapters than I've defined here.
> 
> There's one character here whose dialogue I really needed to hit a certain 'balance' for, and, well, I feel like I may have hit it more heavily on one side of that balance than the other. I won't be any more specific than that, as I'd rather not give anything away, but I don't feel like it's too much, so it's fine regardless. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

"Whoa, this place looks weird," Sora commented, staring around at the hedge maze that surrounded them. "Someone must've spent ages working on this."

"You don't know the half of it," Roxas muttered.

They'd arrived in Wonderland. Going off of Riku's expression, this probably wasn't quite where they were supposed to end up, but they were in the right world, so it was no harm done. Riku turned to the rest of them.

"This is Wonderland," he told them, mostly for Sora's benefit. "One of the princesses lives here. Her name is Alice. Right now, our priority is finding her. We need to figure out Ansem's plan before we do anything, or if he's even behind all this."

Sora folded his hands behind his head. "So, what's the plan here, Riku?"

"Usually, Alice is in the Queen of Heart's court," Riku replied. "But there's no guarantee she'll be there, either. Not when the journal still isn't quite normal."

"We could split up," Namine suggested. "We'll be able to cover ground faster."

"But you can't go by yourself," Roxas insisted. "If any Heartless show up, we need to keep you safe."

"What if we compromise? Split up into teams of two?" Sora said. "That way we can search more quickly, but we can still watch each others' backs."

Namine tilted her head. "The Cheshire Cat has met both Sora and Roxas before," she mused. "He might be willing to talk to at least one of them, here. And he might be able to give us some kind of hint. He always knows more than he lets on."

"Then Roxas and I can look for this cat while you and Riku check with the queen," Sora decided, smiling.

Soon after that, the group split up. Namine and Riku went to the court. Roxas, meanwhile, led Sora to the Bizarre Room.

"The cat kind of just shows up wherever it wants," Roxas mumbled in explanation. "Usually only when you don't want it to. If we can't find him here, we'll check the forest."

In the Bizarre Room, Sora had to take a moment to take the whole thing in. It was a nice enough room; it had tiled floors, a nice table, some chairs to sit at, and a fireplace to keep warm. A nearby snoring doorknob made him giggle. Most of it would be normal, if not for the fact that this room was gigantic. He would've had to jump just to even reach the seats of the chairs.

"Why is this room so big?" Sora asked.

"Certain things in Wonderland can make you change your size," Roxas answered. "There's drinks in here that can make you bigger, or shrink you down to our height. The rules in Wonderland are...weird, none of it really makes sense. It didn't seem like it was supposed to, when Luxord and I were here. So I guess this room's so big because it's Wonderland?" He ended with a shrug.

Sora laughed. "This place sounds like fun. Probably not if you're here for too long, though."

"Well, let's not have too much fun. We do have a mission here," Roxas pointed out.

"Right."

The biggest downside to being so small was how long it took to search the room. Climbing the table wasn't as easy for Sora as it was for Roxas, who insisted Sora should be able to keep up better than it was. The fireplace revealed no answers. The Cheshire Cat couldn't be found napping in a chair, nor curled up in a nook.

It didn't help that Sora had no idea what this cat was even supposed to look like. The most he got from Roxas was, "You'll know him when you see him". What kind of cat were they supposed to be looking for? Would the cat be shrunk, like them? Or the size a cat would normally be in a room this large? For that matter, the cat could easily be larger or smaller than the average cat. Given what he'd seen of Wonderland so far, though, he doubted the cat was anything but average.

"I don't know why we're looking for it," Roxas complained once the room was thoroughly searched. With a groan, he fell into a sitting position in front of one of the chairs. "If it doesn't want to be found, that can't won't be anywhere."

"Maybe he doesn't know we're looking for him," Sora suggested. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he began to call for the Cheshire Cat.

"What are you doing?" Roxas stared up at him.

Sora sighed. "Yeah, cats don't usually like to come when you call for them. Or, some cats are like that, anyway. This one seems like he'd be that type of cat."

"Most cats don't make a habit of returning their calls, do they? Then again, most cats don't make a habit of learning to use phones, either."

That wasn't Roxas. Sora looked around, but he couldn't see any kind of cat anywhere. Roxas didn't seem to, either, as he shot furitive glances around the room.

"Just show yourself already!" Roxas finally demanded. "We don't have time for this!"

"No, I suppose you don't," this new voice agreed. "In fact, I think your time's just run out. As much as I'd like to come out and play, the shadows seem like they'd have more fun."

At that, Sora and Roxas were surrounded. Two giant Heartless jumped down on either side of them, juggling large, flaming batons. The name Trickmaster popped into Sora's mind.

"Ice magic is good against them," Roxas noted under his breath. Sora just barely caught the words, but as he stared up at the Trickmaster in front of him, he nodded.

"If we put out the flames..." Sora thought aloud, his keyblade appearing in his hand. Was he capable of ice magic? He'd...hadn't he already used ice magic before, in Traverse Town? He'd fought purely on instinct then, letting himself cast spells without thinking about it. There hadn't been any strategy. Sora had no idea what he was capable of, no idea how to purposefully cast certain spells, and he wasn't sure if he could consciously do it. But maybe his instinct would be enough. He'd known exactly what these creatures were the moment he set eyes on one. Sora was sure he'd fought these things before, in some other adventure. Somewhere in his memories, he knew what to do.

Two keyblades appeared in Roxas' hands, charging with power. A ball of ice shot out of them and homed in directly on one of the Trickmasters.

Sora raised his keyblade in the air. A giant icicle appeared in front of him. The second Trickmaster made contact with it as soon as Roxas' attack reached the first.

"Not so bad after all," Roxas noted with a snort of amusement.

"What do you mean, 'not so bad'?" Sora protested with a pout. "I don't remember much, but I was probably good at this. Right?"

Roxas snorted again. "At least you're thinking about your attacks now, instead of just casting spells at random. Instinct only goes so far. You have to know your enemy's weaknesses and use them."

The flames engulfing the two Trickmasters' batons went out and the two Trickmasters slumped to the ground, stunned. Sora's keyblade wrippled with electricity as he charged at one of the Trickmasters, striking with elemental attacks. Roxas opted to go for physical strength, attacking the other Trickmaster with long, powerful combos. Between the two of them, it wasn't long before both Trickmasters were defeated. Even when there had been two of them, the Heartless had been clearly outclassed.

Then, something in Sora's head screamed, pounded, expanded. With a gasp, he fell to his knees, grabbing at his head as if it would do him any good. The Cheshire Cat appeared standing on the floor in front of him, and Sora recognized him, realized this was who had spoken before the Trickmasters arrived. He'd been here before, tried to get answers out of this cat before, hadn't he? And he hadn't been alone then, either. But Donald and Goofy weren't here this time.

"Remembering to forget, are we?" the Cheshire Cat asked, gazing at Sora. "Or perhaps we're forgetting to remember. It's hard to say, this time. The shadows you just defeated are ones that can steal memories, but I'd say you're doing more of that than them."

"The Cheshire Cat has all the answers..." Sora said to himself. He struggled into a standing position once more. "...and you do, right? You know what's going on, why the journal still isn't right."

"The journal is itself as much as it ought to be," the cat answered. "But, perhaps sooner than it ought to be."

"I told you, we don't have time for your riddles," Roxas growled, keyblades still firmly nested in his hands. "Just tell us what's going on already!"

"We wouldn't want too much information in the wrong hands, now," came the response.

"But, we're the right hands," Sora pointed out. "Right? We're trying to fix the journal. Not, uh...whatever you said before."

"It's a good life practice to fix one's own mistakes, isn't it," the Cheshire Cat pondered. "Whether you're right or wrong, that's not for you to decide. Nor is it up to your shadow trailing behind you."

Sora was stumped at that one. No matter how much he thought about the cat's answers, none of it made sense. He wasn't even sure the cat was even trying to answer their questions.

"Why are the Heartless acting differently?" Roxas asked, plowing through. Sora was thankful he was here to get to the heart of the matter. This conversation would be useless on his own.

"Shadows are always at the beck and call of the dark, are they not?" the cat asked. "Unlike a cat, the shadows answer their calls."

"Who's controlling them?" Roxas asked.

"I'd rather just stick to the script." The Cheshire Cat flicked his tail. "Wouldn't want too much information in the wrong hands."

"Right." Roxas crossed his arms. "Wouldn't want any failures to be given too much information."

"If you were failures..." The cat flicked his tail. "That would mean that the journal shouldn't have made you exist here. Yet, here you are, and I'd say the journal was working perfectly then."

Roxas took a step backwards; he didn't seem to have an answer to that. In the silence, Sora piped up. "Do you...do you know where Kairi is?" He rubbed at his head. It still hurt quite badly, but it wasn't pounding quite so much as before now.

"You don't?" The cat narrowed his eyes. "I can see her fine from here."

Another useless answer. Sora sighed, glancing over at Roxas. "I'm going to be honest. I have no idea what anything he's said means."

"Me either," Roxas replied.

"So...what should we do now?" Sora asked. "We've asked what we need to ask, I think... And if there's anything we've missed, we can ask more questions later, right? But the two of us, talking to the cat on our own, isn't doing us much good."

"You can ask, but the Cheshire Cat won't always tell," the cat added with a purr.

"Should we find the others again?" Sora continued. "Maybe Riku or Namine could figure this out... If we tell them what the Cheshire Cat said, or if they talk to him themselves..."

Roxas stiffened. "Do you really still trust him?"

"I trust Riku. I always have and always will," Sora told him.

"He betrayed you," Roxas pointed out. "During your first journey, he turned against you. He let himself fall to darkness and even took your keyblade and your friends from you for awhile. And he's not even the friend you thought you knew, anyway, he's the vesesl for all the journal's original memories, too."

The pressure in Sora's head very kindly reminded him it was still there, and he struggled not to wince. He knew everything Roxas had just said already. And not because he'd already been given a summary of it all by Riku. The more Sora's thoughts lingered on his persisting headache, the more Roxas and the Cheshire Cat talked, the more he realized some of his memories were returning to him. Not all of them, and not all at once. But it seemed fighting the Trickmasters had helped jog his memories a bit, making Namine's powers work a bit faster, if only briefly. He didn't just know everything Roxas had drawn attention to, he remembered it. He remembered the sting of Riku's betrayal, remembered how useless and alone he felt in Hollow Bastion. But he remembered more than that, too. He remembered how else he felt, too, and he remembered what he saw from Riku when they'd fought. Things Roxas must not've picked up on, or perhaps had chosen not to. But Sora believed in his friends.

Sora balled up one of his hands into a fist. "Riku was lost and confused," he answered. "He thought I abandoned him, he thought I abandoned Kairi. To him, it looked like I just...replaced them, and forgot. He looked into the darkness and saw the strength he needed to save Kairi. He was _hurting_. He didn't know what was going on anymore than I did, but he's the one who paid the price for it. But now he knows better, we both do. He never stopped being my friend, and I know he wouldn't make the same mistakes again." He paused, looked Roxas in the eye. "No matter what, Riku will always be Riku. It doesn't matter how he's changed. My best friend is still right there."

Roxas gritted his teeth as he took another step back. "How would you know?" he countered. "Your memories were rest, you don't..." He seemed to examine Sora's face more closely, and didn't finish the the thought.

"Fighting the Trickmasters must've boosted Namine's powers," Sora said. "Not completely, of course. Most've what I remember now is from that first journey, but... I remember it, now. I was there. I know. You may not trust Riku, and I won't force you to, but I do. I always will."

"To trust, or not to trust?" Sora jumped as the voice rang in his ear. The Cheshire Cat had transported itself to a laying position, curled around his neck. He could both hear and feel the cat purr, and it never stopped for a moment. "Who to trust, where to trust? What to trust, why to trust? Personally, the only thing I trust is my lack of trust in anything."

At that, the cat disappeared. Its weight weighed down on Sora's one moment, and then he was freed of it the next. Sora rubbed at the back of his next, still warm where the cat had briefly pressed against it.

Roxas bit his lip, then sighed. "Let's go find the others," he decided. "You're right. They might be able to get more out of that conversation than we did.

* * *

 

The first thing Riku saw was Sora's face hovering over him, radiating concern. There were noises around him, some probably from Sora, others from...elsewhere, but he wasn't really processing them at the moment. He could see other things besides Sora's face from his position, but he wasn't processing those, either. Some part of him ached badly. His chest? Maybe. Most of his focus was devoted to that, not leaving him much room for anything else.

What...what happened?

Mentally, Riku tried to take a step back. He...they were in Wonderland. All four of them, Sora and Roxas and Namine and Riku, were all in Wonderland. They...they'd split up. He'd teamed up with Namine to try to find Alice; the journal had reported, last he checked, that she should still be here. They'd figured she'd probably be at the court of the queen if she was anywhere. He remembered the feeling that, maybe for the first time, things were starting to look up. Had they found Alice? Had Alice been safe? That, he couldn't recall. Sooner after reaching the court, everything seemed to be...gone. There wasn't even a blank space to fill in; his memory seemed to suggest that he and Namine had just gotten to the court.

Sora waved a hand in front of Riku's face, seemed to be calling out to him. Groaning, Riku curled up on his side. Why did he hurt so much? Was it related to the gap in his memory? How long had he been...out? And what about Namine? Finally looking away from Sora's face, he looked around, but couldn't see her from his position. Was she still here?

"Hey, c'mon Riku, talk to me." Sora's voice finally filtered into his perception. Riku looked back up at him. "I know you're awake. What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm...fine." Shakily, but on his own, Riku struggled first to his knees, then onto his feet. He couldn't convince his arms to unwrap themselves from around himself, but otherwise everything seemed to be in working order. His legs, his arms, he could still move. He was still...tired, winded, in pain? Probably something like that. Sora moved to try to help him up, to help him stay up, but against Riku's usual better judgement, he resisted. That better judgement didn't occur to himself right now. He didn't even think about accepting help.

Sora's hands hovered in the air, still wanting to assist. Eventually, however, they dropped to his sides with a sigh. "I'm glad you're okay," he said. Judging by the look on his face, though, he didn't seem to entirely believe it. Riku couldn't say he was surprised. They knew each other well enough by now. Riku could easily pick out Sora's emotions most of the time, and Sora could easily see through Riku's facades and bravados. "What happened here?" Sora repeated. "We came back to regroup, and you two were both...unconscious."

Glancing over his shoulder, Riku could see now that Namine was still here, too. Thankfully. It appeared, however, that she was in at least as bad shape as he was. Roxas was helping her stand up, and he let her lean against him for support. It looked like they were both still at the queen's court, too, but other than the four of them, the court was empty at this point.

"I don't know," Riku replied honestly. "I remember getting here, but not much else after that. It's all a blank."

"We got to the court, and Alice was here," Namine interjected. "I saw her. The queen was here, too, along with some of her soldiers. Soon after that, I was knocked out. I didn't see what attacked us, but it must've gone after us both."

"The Heartless, maybe?" Riku pondered. "Or..." ...something worse? "It doesn't look like Alice is here anymore. No one else, either."

He looked at Roxas. Roxas was shooting him with a nasty glare, anger clearly visible on his face. "How could you let this happen?" he demanded. "You were supposed to keep Namine safe!"

"I-- I'm sorry," Riku began, but he was quickly interrupted.

"Roxas, it's okay," Namine said. "I'm fine. It's not Riku's fault, he was attacked, too. He might've gotten hurt before I was. Neither of us had any idea what was going to happen. We didn't know anything was there. There was nothing he could've done."

"Whatever," Roxas answered, not taking his eyes of Riku. "Everyone else may trust you, but I don't. I can't trust you to stay on our side. I can't even trust you to keep anyone safe."

The pain in Riku's chest briefly spiked, making him wince. "I won't ask you to," he replied.

Roxas' outburst couldn't have been just brought on by this attack. Had something happened between Roxas and Sora? And besides that, Riku knew what the real Riku had done to the other Roxas. If he himself had to make the choice, he would've done the same thing. But he wasn't about to beg for forgiveness he didn't deserve, and he wasn't about to try to explain himself any further.

If Riku had the choice, he wouldn't trust himself, either.

Sora put a hand on Riku's shoulder. "We, uh, found the cat," he reported, looking between Riku and Namine. "We were able to ask it some questions, but we couldn't figure out its answers. We were hoping maybe you two could help us out?" Quickly, he gave them a summary of the conversation.

Namine frowned. "The journal's in an accelerated state, maybe? But it doesn't sound like this is something wrong with the journal. This isn't because of any bugs. It sounds like someone is purposefully making a move."

"And we did something to push them to action," Riku added. All of them? Or just one of them? If it was any of them, it was probably something he did. Wouldn't be the first mistake he's made.

"But I can't tell who it is," Namine admitted. "Not from that answer."

"Me either," Riku agreed. "And now Alice is gone, too, and I'm not sure where she went, either."

A voice purred around them, coming from everywhere at once, yet nowhere at all. "Exactly where she should be, though a bit too early. And to think, you only just arrived..."


End file.
